Ali and I greatly appreciate Todd Van Epps, the owner of Wicked Smart Apparel in Watervliet, N.Y.,just outside of Albany. Wicked Smart Apparel is a major supplier of corporate apparel and league and team uniforms. They do business all over the country.

For various league and other reasons, we needed to change the name of the Bedlam Farm Warriors to the Albany Warriors, which means sometime in the next few months, we will need to change our uniforms as well.

Ali says they will continue to use the old ones for practice and unofficial games. Todd sat us down in his conference room and showed up the million plus options. It is not simple to buy uniforms for kids, there are issues relating to color, size, socks, weather, ease of movement and comfort.

Todd hauled out a bunch of catalogues and we spent about an hour going over them. We don’t need the uniforms right away, or so I thought, we are getting them in two weeks. I wrote Todd a down payment of $500. I’ll need several hundred more than that, the team has grown to 22 players.

The regular outdoor leagues are starting up next week. The team is so important to these children. Ali says he has a rule that grades must always go up, not down, if the kids are to remain on the team, and he says most members of the team are on their school honor rolls. He is quite proud of them.

Next week, we begin tutoring the six members of the team who need some help with their English language skills.

I am so grateful to Todd (It would be wonderful, I think, if you are so inclined, to drop him an e-mail and thank him for supporting our work. He is [email protected].) He is beyond nice and helpful and helps us keep the price down.

Todd was so patient with us, and helpful, and cost-conscious. He is one of those angels who pops up from time to time support this work. I could not believe how many options we had to wade through.

The uniforms are blue gray, I’ll put a photo up when we get the proofs. Ali says the kids love their sweatbands and wear them to school.

Note:I have a trunk full of things to bring to Saad, but we put off that trip, we are waiting for delivery of the flat screen TV we got for him, we want to bring all of these things – a radio, framed prints, groceries – all at once. We’ll go later in this week or on Monday.